A stout (and oyster) fellow

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They hand him the keys to a microbrewery. He boils bivalves in a bold, black beer. Here's how.

"When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. I wonder would they know it was me?" ponders Sebastian Dangerfield in J. P. Donleavy's novel, The Ginger Man. But just imagine this written, not by the rascally, rapscallion Dangerfield, but from the point of view of an oyster.

What if one brave oyster sacrifices its life (in a rather noble cause) by tumbling into a bubbling vat of stout?

What happens when that stout is served in a pub - would we know the strong, dark brew has been infused with the flavour of a single oyster?

The proposition has exercised my mind a fair bit lately since I was effectively handed the keys to a microbrewery for the day. Of course, one oyster won't be nearly enough - we must throw in at least a dozen of the blighters to make a real oyster stout.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The story starts over a plate of oysters and a pint of stout with Lion Nathan's Michael Comerton, the man behind the James Squire Brewhouse concept, a series of franchised brewpubs spun off the James Squire beer brand. The newly commissioned James Squire Brewhouse at King Street Wharf is about to come on line, Comerton explains, before making me an offer I cannot possibly refuse: "Brew anything you like."

"I would want to push the limits a bit, Michael," I say. He nods and takes me at my word.

The inspiration to brew an oyster stout comes to me on waking the next morning, and by the afternoon it is a major obsession.

Oysters and stout are one of the great beer and food pairings with those roasty, bitter notes deliciously counter-pointing the salty, sensuous flavours of the shellfish.

"I want to brew an oyster stout," I inform Comerton, "using real oysters." "Okay," he says, with only the slightest hint of hesitation.

So I find myself one steamy afternoon last month, taking refuge in the Malt Shovel Brewery's cool-room while selecting hops for my brew with head brewer Doug Donelan and Comerton.

We are gently rehydrating with tank samples of the brewery's limited-edition summer ale as I crush some Tasmanian-grown hop flowers between my palms and sniff, aaah! - a spicy, limey burst of aroma tells me this is the one. Oysters and lime wedges, that works, doesn't it?

The hop is a new variety with the unromantic, temporary name of A29 (sounds like a freeway, if you ask me) and these emerald-green cones will be added late in the boil. For bittering and flavour hops, I choose two classic English varieties grown in the New World, Fuggles (New Zealand) and East Kent Goldings (US).

The following morning I turn up at the King Street Wharf brewhouse 15 minutes early, wearing my waterproof Blunnies and ready for action. Comerton has fired up the hot water tank and by all rights we should be "mashing in" the crushed grain (a combination of pale malted barley, crystal wheat, roast barley and roast malted barley). But it seems a belt has broken on the mill up at Malt Shovel HQ as the first bag is being crushed and Donelan has raced off in search of a replacement.

It gives us some time to workshop a name for the brew with Black Pearl and Free Willie ("It's a whale of a beer") coming out as early favourites; because it's a full moon, we try to work in a lunar theme, as well.

There's always plenty to do in a microbrewery, such as tasting the inaugural brew (Governor King Pale Ale) from the fermentation vat - it's still fruity and yeasty but ready to transfer to the lagering tank (two days later, it's on tap).

At lunchtime Donelan turns up with bags of crushed grain (having found a belt of roughly the right size at a washing machine repair shop) and we start mashing in.

As Donelan and I tip in the grain, Comerton stirs it into the hot water with a large wooden paddle. An appetising porridge-like smell rises from the mash tun; later, after pouring in the dark, roasted malts, a delicious coffee aroma wafts about the brewhouse.

By 5.30pm our sweet wort boils in the "copper" and we're ready to toss in the Fuggles hop pellets (basically, compressed cones), which will provide most of the desired bitterness. The hops are boiled for 90 minutes, filling the steamy brewhouse with a piquant, resinous smell; the "late gift" of East Kent Goldings is designed to create some hop flavour in the final drop.

Twenty minutes before the end of the boil, it's showtime for the oysters. I wrap 13 Manning River rock oysters in a piece of muslin, tie it up with twine and dangle the lot into the boiling wort. Why 13? Well, we reckon it should be a "brewer's dozen" and also to represent the 13 full moons this calendar year (it's getting late, after all). Later, we eat the "wort-poached" oysters, which have shrivelled up like smoked oysters and taste distinctly like wort. "I could get to like these," Comerton says.

Now it's time for the hopback (which looks suspiciously like a deep-fryer chip basket), so a rectangular receptacle is first filled with hot wort as it's transferred to the heat exchanger.

Next I fill the basket with the hop flowers and immerse it in the wort receptacle - it gives off a delicious, heady herbaceous smell (using fresh hop cones is like using fresh herbs in cooking). After a few minutes I drain the basket, discard the stewed flowers and replenish it with fresh ones. "It's like a bouquet garni," Comerton says.

Soon the fermentation tank is filled with cooled wort. At 8.34pm we pitch the yeast and offer a small prayer to Saint Arnou, patron saint of brewers. But there's still plenty of hard work to do - like shovelling the spent grain out of the mash tun, cleaning and sterilising vessels, then hosing the place down.

Irish-born Comerton has two university degrees, law from Trinity College, Dublin and brewing from the prestigious Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh - "I never made it past the bar," he quips.

Yet he gets his hands nice and dirty doing his day job. As I hose out the brewhouse floor at the end of our 14-hour brewing day, he has his gloved hand down a drain outside, attempting to unblock it.

When we finally change out of our brewing kit and shut the brewhouse door, I am ready to lie down on one of the pub's comfy leather sofas for a while. Instead, we toast 13 Moons Oyster Stout with pints of porter before stumbling into the night towards inviting beds.

Before falling asleep, I toss and turn, fretting over my creation. Will the yeast do its job all right? Will the stout taste too bitter? Will you be able to taste the oysters? Let me know.

13 Moons Oyster Stout will be on tap from Tuesday, October 19 at the James Squire Brewhouse, King Street Wharf.

Glossary of brewing terms

Heat exchanger

Equipment that cools hot liquid by passing it through a series of pipes jacketed with very cold liquid.

Porridge-like mixture of grist (crushed grain) and hot water. Mashing in (mixing the two together) is done in a large vessel called a mash tun.

Pitching yeast

Once the wort is cool, liquid or dried yeast is pitched into the fermentation vat to start fermentation.

Wort

Sweet liquor which has been strained from the mash. Wort is boiled with hops in the copper or brew-kettle.

Oysters and stout

One of my happiest beer and food memories is from a day spent with a Bruny Island oyster grower who loved black beer. I provided the porter and stout while he shucked oysters that had been under water less than an hour beforehand. We slurped and swallowed a fair bit, watched the sun dance on the bay in front of us and wondered who first discovered such a heavenly match.

Charles Dickens's novels are full of London gentlemen hoovering up oysters and washing them down with pewter mugs brimming with porter, but the combination was probably discovered by much poorer folk. The oysters would have been prised off rocks (ie, a free meal) while stout or porter completed a nutritious, sustaining meal that also - ahem - was supposed to increase one's vigour!

An oyster does not have a subtle flavour (you either love or hate it) and the same could be said of stout. Together, they're a rare match of contrasting flavours - bitter and roasty stout against the oyster's salty tang and succulent texture. A matched tasting at The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay suggested rock oysters worked best with less-robust stouts (try James Squire Porter and Sheaf Stout), while Coffin Bay pacifics or Moonlight Flat angasi (from the Clyde River) could stand a full-bodied Guinness Foreign Extra Stout (the Dublin-brewed 7.5 per cent version) or Southwark Old Stout.

The oysters at The Boathouse are freshly shucked and served in their own brine, which really ramps up the salty flavour (especially compared with washed oysters that comprise up to 95 per cent of the market). "Like being dumped by a big wave," says Boathouse owner Tony Papas.

If stout's just not your go, substitute James Squire Pilsener or Pilsner Urquell, both hoppy beers, which play more of a second fiddle to the oysters. Michael Comerton swears by Rodenbach (a Belgian red ale) with oysters, while South Coast oyster grower Steve Feletti recommends Coopers Vintage Ale.

Oyster stout

Some years ago I drank a pint of stout at The Porter House brew-pub in Dublin's Temple Bar district, which claimed to be "brewed with fresh oysters".

It was perhaps a touch of the blarney but I swear I could taste some subtle, oyster-like flavour in that dusky brew. Incidentally, The Porter House is possibly the only pub in Dublin that doesn't serve Guinness on tap (much to the disbelief of some locals). It pours its own Plain Porter, Wrasslers 4X Stout and, of course, Oyster Stout.

My research revealed various oyster stouts had been made at one time in the United Kingdom but the style had died out during the 1960s. In recent years, Marston's Oyster Stout and Swales Whitstable Oyster Stout have appeared, both designed as an accompaniment to oysters, rather than containing any part of the bivalves.

I also discovered that crushed oyster shells have been used as "kettle finings" by some brewers over the years. Certain oyster stouts of old may have been made with "oyster essence" or, perhaps, the brine from opened oysters. But I wanted to use the real thing; adding the oyster meat late in the boil seemed the best way to pick up flavour.

Good Food Month events

Brewery tour and beer tasting

Discover the craft of brewing at the home of some of Australia's finest beers.

Originally opened as the Hahn Brewery in 1988, the Camperdown brewery became the Malt Shovel Brewery in 1998 and now produces a range of handcrafted beers in honour of Australia's first brewer, James Squire.

As part of Good Food Month, master brewer Chuck Hahn and his passionate team of brewers will conduct tours through the brewery, where you can see the highest quality ingredients and the environment required to brew award-winning beers. The tour culminates with a beer tasting and an introduction to a selection of foods matched specifically to the brews.